Probably he means the menus and stuff. Think like managing items in System Shock 2 as opposed to Bioshock where the small things you find are automaticlly taken care of for you.

I can't say as I didn't play Deus Ex when it came out. When I tried it much later I found it a little cluncky and barely gave it a chance but I plan on giving it another chance in the future. There's a steam sale coming, so I might pick it up cheap and give it a go. Considering how much I liked Deus Ex Human Revolution, I'm more than inclined in trying the original.

The game has aged quite poorly, but I managed to play it to China. Then the difficulty killed me so I had to turn on the magical hack powers of hacks and finish it. The story is still fantastic though. As much as I'd hate to say it, Deus Ex: Invisible War has held up a bit better in terms of gameplay, but the story is still terrible.

IW has tiny levels, the loading times were still very long when I played it a few years ago, despite it being several years old. It's not much fun to play when it almost seems like half your time is spent sitting in front of a loading screen. It's probably better now on modern computers but it was barely acceptable at the time. The original had much better level design, and its areas weren't broken up into miniscule pieces.

The game has aged quite poorly, but I managed to play it to China. Then the difficulty killed me so I had to turn on the magical hack powers of hacks and finish it. The story is still fantastic though. As much as I'd hate to say it, Deus Ex: Invisible War has held up a bit better in terms of gameplay, but the story is still terrible.

Really, people struggle with Deus Ex? Well, I suppose you have to be good at the stealth aspect to beat it on the highest difficulty. I always went for the stealth kills and plenty of explosives so I never had much trouble.

Deus Ex really hasn't aged well though so I actually don't feel that compelled to play it again since Deus Ex 3 turned out to be a near perfect sequel.